Even After You're Gone
by Raine Yuy
Summary: //...Broken violet eyes lifted to meet anguished sapphire. “Stupid heart would never listen. Wouldn’t open its eyes and see for itself.” 2xR.


Disclaimer: Gundam Wing was never and will never be mine.  
  
There were no obvious indications. No boldly significant signs. They were just very hesitant observations. Like footprints on the sands washed away by the waves, the clues were easily unrecognizable but still imprinted in his mind no matter how much he denied the thoughts. And so he sat across from her in a dimly lit room with the table romantically set for two. His jaw clenched and his gut churned. And he wondered again at the pain that tightened his chest. And he wondered again if it was considered a betrayal for a woman to have suspicious thoughts of another.  
  
"You don't like the food, Princess?" he prayed that his voice did not betray him. Prayed that hers would when she answered.  
  
She looked up in surprised at the question and then smiled a smile that barely reached her turbulent aquamarine eyes. "Oh no, they're quite delicious." And as if to prove the point, she stabbed into the meat of the lobster and daintily placed the food in her mouth. Playfully, she closed her eyes and made appropriate noises that made the waiter behind her smile in amusement.  
  
Duo felt his heart constrict and knew with terrible certainty that he just fell a little more in love with Relena Peacecraft more than he already was. Inside, he moaned his demise and yet smiled in resignation. No one could certainly blame him. He was quite certain that all the men in the restaurant were already willing to lay down their lives at the first sight of the former Queen the moment she had entered the room. And most of these men, he knew, were already married. But Relena Peacecraft was a woman to love at first sight. No matter the state she was in. In her comfortable and homely pyjamas or one of her more elegant gowns. It never mattered. One look in her beckoning eyes, her elusive beauty, and hearts were hers for the taking. He had been there. Through the heart-stopping first glimpse of her to the wildly heart-pumping first contact of his skin against hers. He shook his head ruefully at the memories. He never had a chance. He was meant to suffer loving this woman.  
  
"Well, I'm glad you're enjoying it." He smiled indulgingly. Then his smile turned into a frown as he studied her face. Well-applied make-up expertly hid the shadows just below her weary eyes. Her mouth held grim wrinkles bracketing both sides. "Have you been working too much? I've been gone for only a week and you've already lost so much weight."  
  
She reached out and tucked a wayward strand of hair from his face. The action startled him only a little. They were lovers. Mentally and physically intimate with each other. But still, the caress caught him off guard. There was a new gentleness to her touch. A new fragility. "Stop worrying so much Duo. I can stand to lose a little weight anyway. You do tend to feed me until I swore that at times, I was at the verge of blowing up like a balloon."  
  
Only slightly reassured, he replied softly, "Well, if I didn't take care of you, you certainly won't." In turn, he reached across the table and grazed his thumb against her mouth. Her eyes shadowed instantly and her gaze surpassed his form and into another world. Duo Maxwell watched in painful fascination as he became invisible to her. His unoccupied hand balled into a fist. She was off again. Off to meet someone else in a place he could not follow. Her memories.  
  
His innocent touch had triggered another moment she had cherished and stored lovingly into another part of her mind. Another moment in another world. And she became entranced with the frozen time she found herself in. She stood before a shadow, her eyes focused on Prussian orbs that glinted like a rare blue moon in the night. She reached out to touch one hardened cheek and savoured the feel of his warm skin against her palm. Then the shadow reached out in return and grazed his thumb against her lower lip, caressing it tenderly. She closed her eyes and surrendered herself to his magic. And when she opened her eyes, the shadow glided into the night until her sight could no longer differ him from the other shadows. The darkness had stolen from her something that could never be replaced. And then she felt her heart stopped as if it knew that they were of no longer use to her. With the claimed shadow, her heart had followed.  
  
The sound of a chair being pushed back from the table made her blink in surprise. She took a deep breath and struggled with the lingering images of another time. Duo had scraped his chair back and now stood before her, his hand held out in an offer for her to stand as well in preparation to depart. She arched a delicate eyebrow and eyed him questioningly.  
  
"We're leaving?"  
  
"You need to rest. You look like you're about to fall face first into your lobster." He gently prodded her through the room and into the parking lot. She let him lead her as they reached the black Mercedes. He opened the passenger door for her and slid himself into the driver's side.  
  
Silence enveloped them as he slid the vehicle into the dark road. She studied his profile and wondered at his sudden pensiveness. For as long as she had known Duo Maxwell, he had never been short in conversations. Perhaps his trip to the space had also taken its toll on him. She turned her head away and stared out into the night through the passenger window. It was so dark out and only the presence of another beside her reassured her that she was not alone in the world. And in the very core of her heart, she somehow felt that she was.  
  
She drifted off into the dream world as she closed her eyes in exhaustion. And she knew what awaited her in her dreams. Prussian orbs as dark and deep as the sea. As turbulent and unpredictable. As mysterious and ruthless. But underneath the currents and into the very heart of it, she had witnessed what lay at the very core. She had felt it caress her skin, taste the saltiness of it in her mouth, swallowed the ecstasy and felt it melt her every bones. And there in her dreams, she met again with her shadow man. And she prayed that she never had to leave him again.  
  
Reality intruded into her liaison as she felt herself being lifted into strong solid arms. She released a soft sigh and cuddled closer to the warmth of the arms that held her securely. She knew those arms. They were dependable, loving arms that had held her through the years of darkness. Arms she had turned to for survival and for the sake of her sanity. She had never doubted these arms in all of the years they had held her in its secure grip. But tonight, the feel of them around her made her sorrow so pronounced that she was forced to open her eyes. He had entered her apartment and laid her down gently at the couch of the living room. She felt panic took hold of her heart.  
  
"Duo! We're here?" she sat up and glanced around the spacious room as if seeing it for the first time. Then her frantic gaze found Duo's concerned eyes. She smoothed her face into a tired smile. "I'm sorry you had to carry me up here. You should have woken me up so you didn't have to tire yourself so much."  
  
She was nervous. Duo frowned as her gaze scanned the room one more time. What was it she was so concerned about? True, this was the first time he had ever been to her apartment but surely she wasn't afraid that it was messy? She had always spent the night with him in his apartment and god knew his place was proof of a man's origin from pigs into a semblance of a human being.  
  
"Come on, let's get you to bed before you pass out." Then he moved to lift her into his arms once more.  
  
Her panic intensified as she scooted back into the couch and held up her hands to ward him off. "No! I mean, it's all right, I can take care of myself. You must be really tired too so you'd better get your own rest Duo." She added a comforting smile to encourage him to take his leave.  
  
He was passed curious and had now moved on to suspicion. Why was she so skittish about letting him take her to her own room? "Actually Relena, I was thinking of spending the night with you. Hell, I haven't seen you for a week. I missed you!" His voice held a note of frustration and hidden hurt.  
  
Her expression softened and she was unguarded enough for a moment for him to take advantage. She almost cried out as he lifted her into his arms and headed towards her bedroom. No! She couldn't let him see. She couldn't let anyone know! But too late.  
  
He flicked the switch to bathe the room with light before he proceeded. He got as far as the middle of the room before his steps halted and his heart froze. He noticed nothing else in the room as the familiar stuff toy that lay in the middle of the bed, against the pillows, captured his whole attention. Then his gaze strayed exactly were a framed photograph sat beside her bedside lamp on a table. As if in a trance, he followed the line of his vision and came face to face with the image of a familiar figure. Inside the photograph, a man with piercing Prussian orbs stared back at Duo as if in defiance. She will never belong to you, those eyes spoke to Duo. And then he released the woman in his arms and stood back from her.  
  
"Duo." She whispered in desperation as though a slightly louder sound might break the man in front of her in pieces.  
  
He smelled him in every nook and cranny of her bedroom walls. That rare scent that could only be of Heero Yuy. Duo wondered then if the woman before him had actually pinpointed the moment his heart shattered into a million pieces because he swore that it had produced a sound when it hit the floor before him. Why wasn't she screaming when there was so much blood on the ground just beneath his own feet?  
  
"Seven years." He brokenly whispered as if those words alone would produce from her answers he longed to hear. "Christ, Relena." Then he slid to the floor and held his head in both his hands as if they were suddenly too heavy for his neck to support any longer. But it was his heart he was worried about. The walls of his chest were too thin to support it shall it completely detached itself from his body and fall like a lifeless weight of meat into the hard, cold ground.  
  
There were no more tears for her to shed. She had drained them long before this sorrowful day. She had drained them the day her former lover, Heero Yuy, had bled to death alone somewhere in outer space. Without her. But in place of tears, the last piece of her heart escaped her grasped and collapsed around her world. She had never meant for him to find out. Not this way.  
  
"Duo." What was there to say to a broken man? "What we had, they were real. Don't ever think that they were lies and ugly acts of betrayals. Those moments with you were the only real ties I had left to the world. Without them, I don't think I would be here now. And what I feel for you Duo, what you made me feel in those moments, they were real too. Please, please, don't ever doubt that."  
  
Too late. He already doubted everything that had ever occurred between them. From the kisses to the words formed out of her mouth. But she was not to blame. The realisation rocked him to the very core and left him reeling, grasping for a solid thing to hold on to. He had assumed that he would be able to fulfill the duty that Heero Yuy had left behind when he left earth. He had assumed that she would be able to feel again what she had felt for the man she had swore her heart and soul to. And he had assumed that she would be able to accept what he offered and finally laid to rest the ghosts of the past. And he had assumed wrong.  
  
"I've seen it so many times in your eyes but I loved you too much to let it get in my way. I loved you too much to accept what my mind already knew but my heart could simply not comprehend. And so I avoided your truth. How many times have I wondered if you were thinking of him when you stared into space? How many times had I heard you whisper his name but pretended that I only imagined them? I knew. Dear god, I knew deep down that it could never be. That it was never meant to be." Broken violet eyes lifted to meet anguished sapphire. "Stupid heart would never listen. Wouldn't open its eyes and see for itself."  
  
She wished she could cry her pain and released the block in her throat that prevented her from breathing. Instead she went to him and cradled his head between her breasts as she rocked them like a mother and a child. "I'm sorry," she whispered in a soothing voice. "So sorry."  
  
"Seven years, Relena. Seven years since he died and you still can't let him go?" He knew the answer to his own question even before she opened her mouth to answer him.  
  
"An eternity from now Duo, and I would still long for him to hold me in his arms." There was no point in avoiding the truth. No one deserved it more so than Duo Maxwell.  
  
He raised his head from her breasts and stared soulfully into her eyes. Acceptance shadowed his violet eyes. "I know that. Knew it from the very first time I saw you with him. But still.I loved you at first sight."  
  
She closed her eyes in a world of sadness. Duo Maxwell loved her in a way that almost equalled her love for Heero Yuy. And in this, she found the most bittersweet pain and happiness. For although she was capable of loving Duo, it would not be fair to love someone in an unequal term. And the moment she opened her eyes and met his own, she knew that he had already come to the same conclusion. She cupped his face gently and wiped a stray teardrop before it fell. There were no words to say to give voice to both their torments. And so he stood without it.  
  
He spared one last glance at the image of the woman he would spend a lifetime loving but never having before he crossed the threshold of her bedroom door. She had laid herself down on the bed and in her arms lay snugly the worn teddy bear that the love of her life had presented her with in what seemed like another time. A whole other world that did not belong to the present. And in her bedside stood proudly the framed photograph of Heero Yuy, wearing a simple black suit and holding a smiling Relena in an elegant white bridal gown. Her gaze was focused on his, old and wise and so full of regret. For the man she had loved more than her very own life was dead and the man who loved her more than his very own life lived. And therein, both their sorrows grew to life and bled together but would never die. Then he closed the door behind him and left the woman to dream of her shadowed man.  
  
The End. 


End file.
